Web Design Trends That’ll Boost Conversions

All of this is going to have a major impact on how we design websites for conversions. In this article, we’re going to look at ten web design trends for 2018 that will determine your online performance for years to come.

Content-first design

The days of designing for specific devices are coming to an end. Roughly ten years ago, the mobile web matured as a technology and wreaked havoc on the entire web design industry. We simply weren’t prepared for a future where people would access the web on anything other than desktop computers.

Every business that had invested in an online presence had invested in a format that was about to become outdated and essentially unusable on the most important device in people’s lives. Sadly, even now, the average mobile experience leaves a lot to be desired and we’re miles away from designing content that works across smartwatches, phones, desktops and 4K TVs hooked up to the web.

The problem is we’re still designing for devices and, in most cases, only two of them. But what about voice platforms and personal assistant apps that don’t even direct people to websites? What about devices connected by the Internet of Things and technologies we haven’t even created yet?

The reality is we need to forget about dated models like mobile-first design and concentrate on a content-first approach. This means formatting content in a way that users can access on your site, Google Home can reproduce in voice search and upscales from mobile displays all the way to the next wave of 8K screens that are hitting the market.

Device agnostic design isn’t a new concept but as the range of devices people use to access the web increases, 2018 is the year we need to start taking it seriously.

Personalisation

Another design concept that’s about to kick off is personalisation. Again, the idea has been around for some time but the technology to implement genuine personalisation has only really caught up with the concept over the last year or two.

Effective personalisation isn’t about calling people out by name or getting creepy with personal details. It’s about pinpointing consumer interests, where people are along the buying process and delivering a tailored message to nudge them on another step.

With tools like Optimizely, you can already create variations of your homepage for different audiences, based on criteria like their geographic location, the device they’re using and where they came from (search, social, etc.) and what kind of content they’ve previously engaged with.

As personalisation becomes more advanced, we’ll be tailoring experiences based on the keywords people in Google, the

Micro interactions

Micro interactions are finally getting the attention they deserve in the wider design community. Speak to any UX designer and they’ll tell you this is long overdue but 2018 is shaping up as the year when micro interactions will make their presence on the mainstream web.

So what are micro interactions and why are they important? Well, as Sneha Munot puts it on UX Planet, they’re “the little animation or visual responses users see when they perform certain actions.”

In other words, micro interactions are visual responses that provide feedback from user actions, enhancing the experiencing of interacting with an interface. Some micro interactions might appear trivial but they confirm that a user action has had the desired effect – eg: confirming that a user successfully liked a social media post.

Moving back to consumer websites, micro interactions tell users when they’ve successfully submitted a payment, favourited a product or submitted a review.

They can also enhance the navigation of your site, the way users interact with content (eg: content they’ve read vs content they haven’t) and a wide range of actions that bring them closer to converting.

Multistep forms

By far the biggest breakthrough we’ve made with form optimisation was converting to multi-step form designs – and we expect to see more brands make the jump in 2018. With multi-step form designs and analytics from Leadformly, we’ve been able to increase form conversions by up to 300% for our clients.

Multi-step forms the intimidation factor of lengthy forms and increase engagement with touch gestures and other micro interactions that reduce typing and create a more immersive experience. And with Leadformly’s form analytics you can pinpoint which fields and other elements on your forms are preventing conversions.

This is how brands should be designing and optimising their forms in 2018.

Machine learning and AI

Machine learning is starting to transform the way people work in just about every industry. In terms of web design and conversion optimisation, we’re on the brink of machine learning tools that can make design choices on your behalf, based on how people interact with your site. Pretty soon, these tools will be able to crunch more data in a day than you could handle in a decade (assuming that much is available) and extract insights.

It’s not about taking the design process away from designers, but rather empowering them to make better decisions, backed up by larger volumes of data than ever possible before.

Predictive analytics

Something else we can thank machine learning for is making predictive analytics possible for brands of any size. Soon, predictive analytics tools will be as common as landing page builders and email marketing platforms, turning your existing data into qualified predictions and better conversion rates.

Imagine an advertising campaign that adjusts based on the weather, new search trends, important sports results or anything else that might affect your conversion rates. MAchine learning and predictive analytics make all of this possible by mapping out a data history, spotting patterns and identifying situations where adjustments should be made.